Miriam Lord: From crest of 2011 wave, Enda has two regrets

Time flies. After the madness of a memorable day, it is a midnight helicopter trip from Dublin to Mayo with the Taoiseach elect. It’s a beautiful night. The sky is clear, and as the lights of the city give way to twinkling countryside, Enda Kenny sits back and lets it all sink in.

“Well, Enda. I think this is it. Finally.” “Yeah.” He says little, staring out the window, trying to hold back tears at the mention his late father Henry and his 93-year-old mother, Eithne.

But he’s done it. Fine Gael has done it. And in some style. Kenny is the hero of the hour. He’s just left a hotel full of delirious Fine Gael supporters, cheering him to the rafters at a victory rally. Former taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave, has sent his best wishes. “I am an old man but you’ve made me very proud.” People are crying.

The Taoiseach leaves to return to the Castlebar count. He wants to be there for the declaration that his constituency has returned an unprecedented four TDs. He is mobbed by well-wishers. It’s five in the morning before he gets home.

On that night in recessionary Ireland, there is almost a feeling – among FG supporters and the huge swathe of people who voted to sweep away 14 years of Fianna Fáil – that there is nothing this incoming government couldn’t do.

After all, they’d promised as much.

When the Coalition took power, there was goodwill for them in spades and they had a long, long honeymoon. Is it five years already? Now there is another election and another flight to bookend the story. This time, we are travelling in the opposite direction, in more ways than one.

‘Everything is grey’

It’s early afternoon on Loop Head Peninsula in Co Clare. But when the helicopter rises from the GAA carpark in Kilbaha, there is no rugged shoreline or patchwork fields to admire. Five years on, the sky isn’t clear. Everything is grey. Can’t see a thing. Scary. Even the mode of transport is somewhat reduced since the last time. The chopper is a small six-seater, paid for out of FG funds so the Taoiseach can get from west Clare to Fine Gael’s final Dublin rally later in the afternoon.

In 2011, Enda was on the crest of a wave.

In 2016, Enda is on the ropes. All the polls indicate Fine Gael will return as the largest party, but that’s where the good news ends. It’s not looking good for a clean return to power for the Taoiseach. His future in politics hangs in the balance.

It all looked so different in 2011.

Enda says his Government has primarily done what it set out to do – halt the country’s economic slide, stabilise the finances and set about delivering a recovery. Now he wants to spread it around. But voters aren’t buying his message. After such heady beginnings, this must be disappointing, having had strangers cheering and shouting encouragement five years ago.

Likes to be liked

Enda has always come across as a man who likes to be liked.

“It’s not disappointment, it’s a learning process,” he remarks. “I’ve often said, you don’t look for gratitude or credit in politics. If you do, you’re a fool.” Yet the big change in attitude – is this how he expected things to go? Did he think it would be different?

“Well, I never expected people to be out cheering, to be honest with you. Never. But I do think that, no matter what job you’re going to do, you’ve got to learn about it and how you might do things, in some cases, differently.”

There are two areas where he says, had he the time over, he would act differently. The first concerns decisions made over the pupil-teacher ratio which adversely affected small schools and pupils with learning difficulties. The second was to do with medical cards.

“My instinct would have said to me ‘you should have seen this coming and have been able to divert it’. Instinct is the thing. You have to have political instinct.You don’t have to legislate for right or wrong, you know?” So instinct let him down?

“No. Once or twice I didn’t act on it. It’s never let me down, but I didn’t act on it.”

The Taoiseach agrees he is still replaying the medical card controversy in his head. “My instinct said this is going to be wrong here, and in the scale of things, it should have been dealt with before it had gone through some really, really bad . . . because you can’t put people through that sort of thing, the pressure on people and their families.”

The last few days have seen Fine Gael, and the Taoiseach, temper their relentless message about keeping the recovery going. At Loop Head lighthouse, where Kenny’s grandfather tended the light and where his politician grandson tends to head in times of triumph and stress, he spoke of how the economic crash “brought bitterness, bitterness, anger and fear for the future”.

He told locals gathered in a windswept and rain-lashed marquee that he’s learned a lesson about hard choices. “It’s never easy, believe me, to make decisions if you’re a public representative and know the impact they’re going to have on a community and a society.”

The Taoiseach thinks language is important. He has “discovered” that if he says you “can’t”or “won’t” have decent services unless you have a strong economy, “that grates on people”. But if he says “look, you will have” these facilities with a strong economy, that gets a more understanding response.

As the helicopter flew through the rain to the east coast, a storm was already brewing below over Kenny’s “whingers” remarks at a rally in Castlebar, which have caused much indignation locally and among political opponents. He said he was talking about “Fianna Fáil lads always trying to stir it up”, not the general public.

It’s typical of the Taoiseach, making unnecessary remarks like that. The sort you might hear down the pub. But then, he says he hasn’t changed since getting the job. But people’s view of him has changed.

“Sometimes, I think I have to be more understanding of who I’m talking to.

“I don’t think I’ve changed. It’s not like, you know, suddenly I’ve acquired all this wonderful authority, so therefore I should be different and supposed to be different, but actually, I’m not.” Perhaps he should be. He raises his fists and says he’s going to cut loose at the rally in Dublin. When he gets there, he roars most of his speech, to the appreciation of the supporters, mild shock of some of the new candidates and fearful screams of the babies.

State coming into play

On his first day, when going into Áras an Uachtaráin, “I got a salute from the Army man as I passed. I suddenly realised things had changed for me and the State was coming into play. It’s the office that he was saluting, and that struck me forcibly.”

But he isn’t the same person as 2011. “When responsibility is on your shoulders, it’s different and you do find that. You meet people and they say ‘Taoiseach’, I guess as if you’ve changed, as if the so-called power actually changes you, when it doesn’t. I think they expected me to be different.

“Maybe I tried to overcompensate.”

He is determined to keep spreading his message – tailored slightly to take account of his overcompensation. He works very long hours. Enda has aged, you can see it in the photographs, since the day he was elected. “I got one of those Fit Bit wristy things. It told me I sleep for 4½ hours a night.” He wishes he could get more exercise. As for that misfiring message about the recovery, is he annoyed that people aren’t accepting it? “You’d like to think they might, but people are entitled to their views.”

When the helicopter lands, the Taoiseach heads off to present an award to veteran actor, Angela Lansbury. Then he meets the troops.